The true life story of Robert Elliot Burns, on which I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang is based, was later recreated in the television movie, The Man Who Broke a 1,000 Chains (1987), starring Val Kilmer.[3]

In 1991, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

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Sergeant James Allen (Paul Muni) returns to civilian life after World War I but his war experience makes him restless. His family feels he should be grateful for a tedious job as an office clerk, and when he announces that he wants to become an engineer, they react with outrage. He leaves home to find work on any sort of project, but unskilled labor is plentiful and it's hard for him to find a job. Wandering and sinking into poverty, he accidentally becomes caught up in a robbery and is sentenced to ten years on a brutal Southern chain gang.

He escapes and makes his way to Chicago, where he becomes a success in the construction business. He becomes involved with the proprietor of his boardinghouse, Marie Woods (Glenda Farrell), who discovers his secret and blackmails him into an unhappy marriage. He then meets and falls in love with Helen (Helen Vinson). When he asks his wife for a divorce, she betrays him to the authorities. He is offered a pardon if he will turn himself in; Allen accepts, only to find that it was just a ruse. He escapes once again.

In the end, Allen visits Helen in the shadows on the street and tells her he is leaving forever. She asks, "Can't you tell me where you're going? Will you write? Do you need any money?" James repeatedly shakes his head in answer as he backs away. Finally Helen says, "But you must, Jim. How do you live?" In the film's final line and shot, James, unseen in the darkness, replies, "I steal." The line is among the most famous closing lines in American film.[4]:25 LeRoy later claimed that the idea for James' retreat into darkness came to him when a fuse blew on the set, but in fact it was written into the script.[4]:36

Audiences in the United States who saw the film began to question the legitimacy of the United States legal system,[5] and in January 1933 the film's protagonist, Robert Elliot Burns, who was still imprisoned in New Jersey, and a number of other chain gang prisoners nationwide in the United States were able to appeal and were released.[6] In January 1933, Georgia chain gang warden J. Harold Hardy, who was also made into a character in the film, sued the studio for displaying "vicious, brutal and false attacks" against him in the film.[7]